The Stoics on
the other hand contended that the model man, the sage, should be
totally devoid of passions. This celebrated dispute turned largely on
the two schools not understanding the same thing by the word
_passion_. Yet not entirely so. There was a residue of real
difference, and it came to this. If the sensitive appetite stirs at
all, it must stir in one or other of nine ways corresponding to the
nine passions which we have enumerated. Such an emotion as Laughter
affects the imagination and the sensitive part of man, and of course
the body visibly, but it does not stir the sensitive appetite, since
it does not prompt to action. To say then that a man has no passions,
means that the sensitive appetite never stirs within him, but is
wholly dead. But this is impossible, as the Stoic philosopher was fain
to confess when he got frightened in a storm at sea. Having no
passions cannot in any practical sense mean having no movements of the
sensitive appetite, for that will be afoot of its own proper motion
independent of reason: but it may mean cherishing no passions,
allowing none to arise unresisted, but suppressing their every
movement to the utmost that the will can.
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